August Demogram is posted

The August Demogram is printed and on its way. I sent out the email notification yesterday, and here are my notes from the chair.

We’re breaking records in Seattle! Wednesday, July 29th was the hottest day ever recorded at SeaTac Airport. Amazing.

We’re also getting a lot of work done. I’d like to thank Jason Sawatzki for all the work that he and Shanna have put into the Literature Distribution plan. It started with an event on July 20th when we batched together all of the literature we had dropped off by our endorsed candidates into bags for each of our Precinct Committee Officers. Jason has broken the district into 5 areas, with a coordinator in each of them.

• R1: Jason Sawatzki, jlsawatzki@gmail.com, 206-226-3598
• R2: Shanna Sawatzki, shanna7@gmail.com, 206-434-6023
• R3: Virginia Rankin, varankin@comcast.net, 206-525-6436
• R4: Erica Minshull, erica_minshull@hotmail.com, 253-468-8582
• R5: Peter Shapiro, j.p.shapiro@comcast.net, 206-524-9386

These five coordinators took the bags that we filled at the meeting and dropped them off on the doorstep of each of our PCO’s. With 8,000 pieces coming from each of our endorsed candidates, that’s a lot of literature.

Peter, Sarajane and I worked all day August 1st in our booth at Lake City Pioneer Days, the biggest summer event in North Seattle. We had several candidates come by and stay for several hours, having a great time talking to voters and enjoying the sun. Check our blog for the whole story!

It’s not all work, though! The 46dems proved again on July 11th that we could have fun with a Summer Holiday Party at the home of Rod Dembowski and Lynna Song. This was the same location where we had our Winter Holiday Party, and we may be setting a tradition. It’s a wonderful home, with wonderful hosts, and it was great to be able to see and enjoy their back yard this time.

The Raymond T. Cole Committee has finished their work to prepare a final draft proposal on what we can do with the gift we received. You can see what is being proposed on pages 6 and 7 of this issue of the Demogram, as well as on our website. The executive board will be reviewing everything on Tuesday, August 4th, and we’ll have a presentation ready at the meeting on August 20th.

We have been pushing organization business like this off for a few months, so the August meeting is going to be very focused on business. Our three elected officials in Olympia will finally get a chance to give us their stories from the Legislative Session earlier this year. And we will be going over how we count and handle voting by considering a proposal that came from the lessons learned in our 2008 election cycle. And the last thing we need to do is hear the report from the Financial Review Committee on how our financial books look in 2009.

All this, and we still have to keep an eye on Washington D.C. Something exciting happened this past week that applies to our platform, and I can’t let the month go without bringing it up. Representative Andrew Weiner from New York’s 9th congressional district introduced a Single Payer amendment to one of the several bills going through Committees on the hill. He was asked to withdraw it at the committee level because the Speaker of the House wanted Single Payer to be introduced, debated and voted upon by the entire US House of Representatives! This means it is up to us to push it through! YES WE CAN!

Chad Lupkes
Chair, 46th District Democrats

Also: An early version of the SR520 resolution was printed in the Demogram. A substitute will be offered at the August 20th meeting, which is available here.